The Places of Jane Austen Jane Austen Sights The Vyne, near Basingstoke A 16 c. house with many alterations over the years, with collections of furniture, paintings and ornaments. There is a long pannelled gallery with heldary carvings related to the Chute family who lived here for over 350 years. We know that Jane Austen came to dances here. Atractive gardens and grounds include an ornamental lake, and one of the earliest summer houses. Open mid-March to end October, not Th. or Fri. The Wheatsheaf on the old London road This is an old coaching inn south of Steventon, where horses were changed on the way to and from London. Stage coaches carried the mail, and Jane Austen walked to here to send and receive her letters. The reciepent paid for the mail, as this was before the invention of postage stamps. The main building is much unchanged on the outside, and inside we can see the low ceilings, original beams and fire place. The old stables are now a restaurant, and at the side is a modern Premier Inn hotel. From the main road you can take a picture which will be much as Jane saw it.

Steventon Church It is over 2 miles walk over Hampshire's rolling countryside from the London road to Steventon. With simple leather shoes, long skirts and on unmade roads, the return walk would be quite an effort. The village is small, scattered and rural, the birthplace of Jane Austen (1775), whose family lived at the rectory (demolished) for 25 years. In the church there are three tablets to the family, and family graves in the churchyard. The church is over 600 years old and very simple inside and out, with some medieval painting on the walls. The wind vane is shaped like a quill pen. A yew tree by the West entrance is over 900 years old. The rectory was large and had 7 bedrooms. Outside there were fields where Mr. Austen farmed and his wife grew potatoes (at that time quite an innovation), formal gardens with a turf walk, sundial, strawberry beds, and a grassy bank down which the young Jane possibly enjoyed rolling as a child, like Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey.

There was also a carriage sweep, and a barn used for private theatricals except in winter, when the dining room had to suffice. Jane’s very full social life at Steventon provided her with much of the material for her novels, and most of her long-life friendships were cemented during her time at Steventon. Here she wrote Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, although they were not published at that time. Her father offered Pride and Prejudice to a publisher in 1797 who turned it down without reading it. Cassandra and Jane attended many dances at nearby large houses, some of which are still standing today. The most notable is the Vyne, a National Trust property, near Basingstoke. Jane also attended social gatherings in Basingstoke at the Assembly Rooms. Barclays Bank in the Market Place in Basingstoke stands where the Assembly rooms used to be. A plaque on the wall of the bank commemorates Jane. She liked shopping, and is known to have gone shopping in Andover, Alton, Alreford, Basingstoke, Whitchurch and Overton during the years she lived at Steventon.

Jane spent the first 25 years of her life in Steventon, before the family moved to Bath in Somerset because her father wanted to retire there. Bath provided scenes for some of her books, but she did not embark on any of her novels during the five tears she lived here. Ashe Village A few miles north of Steventon is the village of Ashe, where Jane's father was also the rector and Jane visited her friends the Lefroy's at Ashe House. From the farmyard we can see a circular pond with central island; this is the source of the River Test, which we can follow on pretty country lanes through little villages of 16c. thached cottages. Upper Test Valley The chalk hills around Basingstoke soak up the rains, and filter the water all year into small streams going South, which combine to make the River Test and its tributaries. The official source is a lake with a circular island which can be viewed from a lane by the old church at Ashe. The river runs clear and fast in shallow channels, often breaking into several streams in its gentle valley. It is the finest trout fishing river in the South of England.

The prettiest part of the valley is the upper part, from Stockbridge to Whitchurch. There are many old thatched cottages, and in some places the land in the valley is common grazing and has never been cultivated, and is a haven for wild-life. The Mayfly near Longparish is a lovely riverside pub with great lunch-time food. Lyme Regis Lyme Regis is a charming seaside town, barely commercialised, with many fine old buildings in its steep narrow streets. Its most famous feature is the great breakwater known as the Cobb, immortalised by local author John Fowles in his novel The French Lieutenant's Woman. Jane Austen was another author who enjoyed Lyme Regis. The coastline is a notable hunting ground for palaeontologists, with some famous local fossil finds, such as the ichthyosaurus found by Mary Anning in the early 19th century. Southampton Southampton developed along the waterfront between the mouths of the Test and the Itchen, Hampshire's two main rivers. Ideally located at the head of Southampton Water, it was a major port throughout the Middle Ages.

In the 19th century, and until well into the 1960s, it flourished as a passenger port able to accommodate the largest liners, and as an aircraft-building centre; Spitfires were produced here. Heavy wartime bombing and post-war redevelopment destroyed much of the city. However, there are some remarkable survivals, including stretches of the town walls, Bargate (a fine medieval gatehouse), the 15th-century Merchants' Hall, and Bugle Street. The Wool House, built in about 1400 as a warehouse, now houses the Southampton Maritime Museum; next door is the mid-19th century Italianate Yacht Club. Jane Austen stayed here with a brother in a house in Castle Square, beside the mediaeval sea walls. There is now a pub on the site of the house. We know that Jane attended dances in the ballroom of the Dolphin Hotel. It has the largest unsupported bay windows in the country. Winchester Capital of Wessex from the time of Alfred, and capital of all England from the 10th century until the Norman Conquest, this is one of the most historic cities in the country, crammed with medieval and later buildings.

The huge cathedral is the second on the site, Norman and a mixture of later medieval styles, and is the second longest in Europe - a beautiful building, full of superb fittings including the best set of medieval chantry chapels in the country and early 14th-century wooden quire stalls of the highest quality. The Triforum gallery has a very good display on the buildings. The statue of William Walker the diver records his dangerous work replacing the footings. The small cathedral close has a medieval pilgrim hall and other attractive corners. The 14th-century Kingsgate has the little Church of St Swithun above. Jane Austen died in College Street, and is buried in the cathedral. The plaque to her makes no mention of her writings. Winchester College, the famous public school, still inhabits the original medieval courts, with chapel and hall. The ruins of the medieval bishop's palace, Wolvesey Palace (English Heritage) are extensive. The town itself is dense, full of Georgian brick houses. One of the best is the Royal Hampshire Regiment Museum, and there are four more military museums in Peninsula Barracks and the City Museum in the pretty little square.

Opposite the decorative Victorian guildhall (with exhibition gallery) is a huge statue of King Alfred (1901). The City Mill (National Trust) of 1774 has a pretty little garden. The 13th-century great hall is the only surviving part of the castle, and one of the finest medieval halls in the country, displaying the so-called King Arthur's table, an early medieval fake, and with a little `medieval garden' attached. Westgate, part of the medieval city walls, has a museum above. See also St Cross. Chawton, the Jane Austen house Revered as the village where Jane Austen spent the last eight years of her life, and wrote three of her novels. A single street of brick houses and cottages, with the Austen house on the corner, only a fair-sized village house. Many relics and some rooms looking much as in her time. Everything in the House is very well annotated, and it takes a while to see it all. Recent renovation has added a kitchen in 18 c. style and a new souvenir shop. Everything in the garden is as of Jane's time, with herbs and plants used for cooking, medical purposes and dying clothing.

Chawton House (not open), where one of her brothers lived, is also little changed. It is just beyond the church, where we can see her mother's and Casandra's graves. The original church was damaged by fire and re-built in the 19 c. Bath Bath owes its prosperity to its hot springs, unique in Britain, and first capitalised upon by the Romans, who constructed a great bathing complex here. In AD 973 Bath Abbey was the site of the coronation of Edgar, first king of All England. The present abbey, dating from the 15th century, is famous for its magnificent fan vaulting and monuments. During the 18th century the presence of the flamboyant Richard “Beau” Nash helped to make Bath one of England’s most fashionable towns, while the Palladian architecture of John Wood and his son turned it into one of the country’s most coherent and beautiful cityscapes. Today the Roman Baths Museum houses the finest Roman remains in Britain, and Bath’s Georgian masterpieces - the Pump Rooms, the Assembly Rooms, the Circus, the Royal Crescent, and the Florentine-style Pulteney Bridge - remain in a marvelous state of preservation.

The town is also a major cultural centre with many excellent museums. Bath is the most elegant town in the country, with acres of handsome Georgian buildings in the creamy orange local stone and surrounded by small green hills. The town has always been based on its natural hot springs, the largest producing a million litres a day of red-stained hot water. The Romans built their baths around the spring, with a temple dedicated to Minerva and the Iron Age god Sulis, providing a mixture of physical healing and spiritual refreshment, doubtless, as later, relieved with more social amusements. The Roman baths were rediscovered in the later 19th century, and can be seen along with the little medieval King’s Bath, and displays of finds which include Roman sculpture and Roman curses. Medieval Bath was small, with a big monastery, whose large and handsome early 16th-century church survives as Bath Abbey, fan-vaulted and with a famous west front. The 17th-century town was promoted as a spa, and really took off from 1725, becoming the most fashionable resort in the country. Present-day Bath is the stylish town created for those who came to bathe and to drink the water in the Georgian period.

Two people heavily influenced the town: ‘Beau’ Nash, the official Master of ceremonies for 50 years who made the resort genteel, and the architect John Wood who designed many areas of Bath including the Circus (1754), the large circular terrace. His son designed the Royal Crescent (no 1 is open to the public) and the Assembly Rooms in the 1760’s, while Robert Adam produced Pulteney Bridge at the same time. Other notable buildings include the Guildhall (1776) and the Pump Room (1789), but fine as these individual buildings are, it is Bath as a whole which impresses, miles of Georgian houses, mostly in terraces, looking much as they did when Jane Austen or Gainsborough visited. The magnificent Royal Crescent was built by John Wood the Younger between 1767 and 1774. This glorious terrace of 30 classically inspired, three-storey houses in glowing, golden Bath stone is often claimed to be the most majestic street in Britain. No.

1 Royal Crescent has been superbly restored and furnished to reflect the golden 18th-century age of Bath when aristocrats, such as the Duke of York, lived here. Royal Victoria Park (laid out from 1830) and the Botanic Gardens in the north-west area of the city, are fine Victorian additions to the town, although by then it had ceased to be fashionable. Best view of the city is from the wooded ridge to the south. Two of Jane Austen’s novels, `Northanger Abbey’ and `Persuasion’, are partly set in Regency Bath and give a good picture of the social life then, as do the Assembly Rooms and the Museum of Costume. Today Bath attracts visitors from all over the world, and has masses of smart shops. The annual summer music festival holds concerts many of the Georgian buildings, and the Holbourne of Menstrie Museum (in a hotel of 1796) and the Victoria Art Gallery have temporary exhibitions as well as their permanent displays. The Building of Bath Museum has details of the construction of the Georgian town. Bath is always bustling and always beautiful.

Jane Austen's House Museum - Hampshire Heritage Collection Location, Contact & Booking Jane Austen’s House Museum was the home of Jane Austen from 1809 until 1817. Jane Austen lived in Chawton village near Alton with her mother, her sister Cassandra and their friend Martha Lloyd. Restored to the rural Hampshire she loved, Jane turned again to writing and it was in this house that she produced all her novels, revising previous drafts, including Pride and Prejudice, and writing her three later novels in their entirety. The house in which Jane lived so happily is now a museum to her life. On display are Austen family portraits and memorabilia, original manuscripts and first editions of her novels. Visitors can stand behind the modest occasional table at which Austen wrote, or spend time in the pretty garden the Austen women so enjoyed. The historical kitchen, which was re-created in 2009, is also open to visitors and has a collection of Regency Costumes for visitors to dress in for their visit. The Bakehouse contains Mrs Austen’s donkey cart which Jane used in the last days of her life.

The Museum’s collection includes manuscript letters written by Jane, her music books with pieces transcribed in her own hand and other Austen family items and furniture. The museum owns the only three pieces of jewellery known to have been owned by Jane, a turquoise beaded bracelet, a topaz cross, and the recently acquired turquoise and gold ring. The Museum is currently celebrating the 200th anniversary of Emma with changing exhibitions and displays including the costumes from the 2009 BBC adaptation of the novel starring Romola Garai and Jonny Lee Miller. The Museum hosts a varied range of events and activities . The Museum is open all year, though only at weekends for the first six weeks of the year. Jane’s birthday is celebrated each year on 16 December with Free entry. To view pictures below, click on thumbnails to expand. Jane Austen's House Museum | Winchester Tourist Information Winchester Tourist Information Offers The house at Chawton is where Jane Austen spent the last eight years of her life. From 1809 until 1817 Jane Austen lived in Chawton village near Alton with her mother, her sister Cassandra and their friend Martha Lloyd.

Restored to the rural Hampshire she loved, Jane turned again to writing and it was in this house that she produced all her novels, revising all previous drafts, including Pride and Prejudice, and writing her three later novels, including Emma, in their entirety. The house in which Jane lived so happily is now a museum to her life. The Museum tells the story of Jane and her family and has on display Austen family portraits and memorabilia, original manuscripts and first editions of her novels. Visitors can stand behind the modest occasional table at which Austen wrote, or spend time in the pretty garden the Austen women so enjoyed. The recreated historical kitchen and bakehouse are also open to visitors. On display will be a selection of Jane’s personal items of jewellery and clothing including her turquoise ring which was recently purchased by the Museum following a successful fundraising campaign. A well-stocked shop provides perfect gifts for every Austen fan. Refreshments are available in the village. Wheelchair accessible (ground floor, garden and toilets) Touch tour available for visually impaired visitors, this must be arranged in advance with our Education Officer as all the staff are part time.

Additional assistance available - please call for information Please note: In 2017 the museum will be closed from 2 January until the end of February, including weekends, whilst preparations are made in the House for the bicentenary commemorations of Jane Austen's life. The Museum will reopen on 3 March 2017. 2017 opening times and prices will be published later in the year. Road Nearest major road is A31/A32. Off roundabout that splits A31-A32 about 0.25 mile into Chawton Village. Public Transport From London Trains from London (Waterloo), run hourly to Alton. Bus connection (Route 64) from Alton Railway Station to Alton Butts then a 12 minute walk down Winchester Road into Chawton village. From Winchester There is an hourly bus service from Winchester Bus Station - it is Route 64 - alight at Alton Butts and then walk (12 minutes) into Chawton. If you get off at the Chawton roundabout please take GREAT care crossing the dual carriageway to the village.

The number 38 bus does run through the village but only every couple of hours. Cycling (secure parking on request) What's on Jane Austens House Museum - GoThisPlace Jane Austens House Museum UK » England » Hampshire »Jane Austens House Museum Jane Austens House Museum: The house at Chawton is where she spent the last eight years of her life. It is of international importance as the place where she did the majority of her mature writing, but at the same time retains the charm of a village home. A 17th century house, it tells the story of Jane Austen and her family. Type M25 Junction 10 onto A3 towards Guildford Follow A3 along Guildford bypass and onto A31 Follow A31 past Farnham and Alton At Chawton roundabout (A31/A32), Jane Austen's House is signposted From Winchester From M3, take A31 Junction towards Alton Follow A31 through Ropley and Four Marks At Chawton roundabout (A31/A32), Jane Austen's House is signposted Public Transport From London Trains from London (Waterloo), run hourly to Alton.

Bus connection (Route X64) from Alton Railway Station to Alton Butts then a 12 minute walk down Winchester Road into Chawton village. From Winchester There is an hourly bus service from Winchester Bus Station - it is Route X64 - alight at Alton Butts and then walk (12 minutes) into Chawton. Admission Jane Austen's House Museum | SHOW ME Jane Austen's House Museum Museum © Jane Austen's House Museum Jane Austen's House Museum in the village of Chawton in Hampshire is where Jane spent the last eight years of her life. It is of international importance as the place where she did the majority of her mature writing, but at the same time retains the charm of a village home. A 17th century house, it tells the story of Jane Austen and her family. The garden contains many varieties of plants and herbs common in the late 18th century and is still a peaceful spot. Website Jane Austen's House Museum - About Jane Austen is one of the most popular and important novelists that England has ever produced. The house at Chawton is where she spent the last eight years of her life.

It is of international importance as the place where she did the majority of her mature writing, but at the same time retains the charm of a village home. A 17th century house , it tells the story of Jane Austen and her family. Revised at this house: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility & Northanger Abbey Written entirely at this house: Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion From a literary perspective the House provides an insight into the life of a writer of her time - a life that is to this day slightly enigmatic. Click here to read an summary of the importance of Chawton to our understanding of Jane Austen , written by Kathryn Sutherland, Professor of English, University of Oxford, and Patron of Jane Austen's House Museum. Facilities Visitors with disabilities The ground floor, the garden and toilets are all accessible to wheelchairs. Audio trail available to visitors with visual impairment. Additional assistance available, please telephone to enquire. Refreshments Jane Austen's Life Jane Austen's Life Jane Austen's Life Jane Austen was born in the Hampshire village of Steventon, where her father, the Reverend George Austen, was a rector of the village.

She was the second daughter and seventh child in a family of eight: six boys and two girls. Her closest companion was her elder sister, Cassandra, who also remained unmarried. Their father was a scholar who encouraged the love of learning in his children. Although she and her sister briefly attended several different schools, Jane was educated mainly by her father, who taught his own children and several pupils who boarded with the family. Her father retired when Jane was 25. By that time her brothers, two of whom later became admirals, had careers and families of their own. Jane, her sister Cassandra, and their parents went to live in Bath. His wife, Cassandra (née Leigh), was a woman of ready wit, famed for her impromptu verses and stories. The great family amusement was acting. Jane Austen’s lively and affectionate family circle provided a stimulating context for her writing. Moreover, her experience was carried far beyond Steventon rectory by an extensive network of relationships by blood and friendship.

It was this world - of the minor landed gentry and the country clergy, in the village, the neighbourhood, and the country town, with occasional visits to Bath and to London - that she was to use in the settings, characters, and subject matter of her novels. In 1802 it seems likely that Jane agreed to marry Harris Bigg-Wither, the 21-year-old heir of a Hampshire family; but the next morning she changed her mind. There are also a number of mutually contradictory stories connecting her with someone with whom she fell in love but who died very soon after. Since Austen’s novels are so deeply concerned with love and marriage, there is some point in attempting to establish the facts of these relationships. Unfortunately, the evidence is unsatisfactory and incomplete. Cassandra was a jealous guardian of her sister’s private life, and after Jane’s death she censored the surviving letters, destroying many and cutting up others. But Jane Austen’s own novels provide indisputable evidence that their author understood the experience of love and of love disappointed. Up to this time the tenor of life at Steventon rectory had been propitious for Jane Austen’s growth as a novelist.

This stable environment ended in 1801, however, when George Austen, then aged 70, retired to Bath with his wife and daughters. For eight years Jane had to put up with a succession of temporary lodgings or visits to relatives, in Bath, London, Clifton, Warwickshire, and, finally, Southampton, where the three women lived from 1805 to 1809. In 1804 Jane began The Watsons but soon abandoned it. In 1804 her dearest friend, Mrs. Anne Lefroy, died suddenly, and in January 1805 her father died in Bath. Eventually, in 1809, Jane’s brother Edward was able to provide his mother and sisters with a large cottage in the village of Chawton, within his Hampshire estate, not far from Steventon. All of Jane Austen’s novels are love stories. However, neither Jane nor her sister ever married. There are hints of two or three romances in Jane’s life, but little is known about them, for Cassandra destroyed all letters of a personal nature after Jane’s death.

The brothers had large families, and Jane was a favorite with her nephews and nieces. The years after 1811 seem to have been the most rewarding of her life. She had the satisfaction of seeing her work in print and well reviewed and of knowing that the novels were widely read. They were so much enjoyed by the Prince Regent (later George IV) that he had a set in each of his residences; and Emma, at a discreet royal command, was “respectfully dedicated” to him. The reviewers praised the novels for their morality and entertainment, admired the character drawing, and welcomed the homely realism as a refreshing change from the romantic melodrama then in vogue. She wrote of the world she knew. Her novels portray the lives of the gentry and clergy of rural England, and they take place in the country villages and neighborhoods, with an occasional visit to Bath and London. Her world was small, but she saw it clearly and portrayed it with wit and detachment. She described her writing as “the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labor.” She died on July 18, 1817, after a long illness.

She spent the last weeks of her life in Winchester, near her physician, and is buried in the cathedral there. In January 1817 she began Sanditon, a robust and self-mocking satire on health resorts and invalidism. This novel remained unfinished owing to Austen’s declining health. She supposed that she was suffering from bile, but the symptoms make possible a modern clinical assessment that she was suffering from Addison’s disease. Her condition fluctuated, but in April she made her will, and in May she was taken to Winchester to be under the care of an expert surgeon. She died on July 18, and six days later she was buried inWinchester Cathedral. Did Jane Austen hate Ramsgate? - BBC News BBC News Did Jane Austen hate Ramsgate? By Jane Onyanga-Omara BBC News 12 June 2013 Read more about sharing. Close share panel Image caption Historian Norman Thomas said that in Austen's time, seaside resorts were considered by some to be "socially dangerous" The writings of Jane Austen suggest she "hated" Ramsgate and considered the seaside resort to be a place of disrepute, a Kent historian has claimed.

The celebrated author made reference to the port, in the Thanet district of Kent, in Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. Local historian Norman Thomas said that in Austen's time, seaside resorts were considered by some to be "socially dangerous" places. "The general thrust is that Ramsgate is the sort of place where foolish immoral people get up to foolish immoral things," he said. In Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813, 15-year-old Georgiana Darcy is taken to the town by her companion Mrs Younge and persuaded to elope with Mr Wickham, who has his eye on the teenager's fortune. But Mr Darcy, her older brother, unexpectedly joins them and Mr Wickham makes a swift exit. 'Immoral things' And in 1814's Mansfield Park, Tom Bertram travels to Ramsgate to visit his friends the Sneyds, who are staying in Albion Place. He finds them on the pier with Mrs Sneyd "surrounded by men".

In an 1813 letter to her brother Charles's wife, Austen also wrote: "Ed Hussey talks of fixing at Ramsgate - Bad Taste!" Mr Thomas asked why the author chose Ramsgate as the object of her "disdain", when it was "comparatively more respectable" than nearby Margate. Her brother, Admiral Francis Austen, an officer with the Royal Navy, was stationed there in 1803 and married a local woman, Mary Gibson. Austen is known to have visited. "We know Jane loved her brother very much," Mr Thomas said. "It could be that she sort of blamed Ramsgate and its women for stealing him away from the family. "She actually wrote a poem called 'Post Haste from Thanet' to celebrate the marriage of her brother Frank to this Ramsgate woman. "And then you start to think, well maybe consciously or unconsciously, she identified Ramsgate as the place where she lost her brother. "Maybe she thought this wasn't the best of marriages...

"I think she then offered a moral warning in the later novels that Ramsgate was a place where if you went, be very careful because you might end up getting mixed up with unsuitable company." But some experts disagree with Mr Thomas's claims. 'Humorous remarks' Kathryn Sutherland, professor of English at St Anne's College, Oxford University, said: "There seems to be one outright remark against Ramsgate in Austen's letters (14-15 October 1813), describing Edward Hussey's plan to 'fix' himself at Ramsgate as 'Bad Taste'. Image caption Norman Thomas claimed Austen disliked Ramsgate "But the reference is clearly facetious. "If you look at a letter of 14 September 1804, written from Lyme Regis, you find Austen making similarly facetious remarks about other places. "These are all humorous remarks to her sister Cassandra." Prof Sutherland said Austen regarded sea-side towns, such as Ramsgate and Brighton, as places where there were opportunities for seduction or less guarded behaviour.

"But in Mansfield Park, Maria Rushworth appears to be seduced into adultery at Twickenham, and no-one suggests Jane Austen disliked Twickenham," she said. "So, I tend to think we should exercise the same humour in reading Austen as she exercised in writing - and not take remarks out of context or to mean more than they probably do." Ann Channon, from Jane Austen's House Museum in Chawton, Hampshire, where Austen spent the last eight years of her life, said she was not sure that the writer disliked Ramsgate. "Although I can see why that may appear to be so in her writings," she added. Mrs Channon said Ramsgate was a popular resort and would have been a gathering place for people with some wealth to visit, a place to see and be seen. "Off the back of this you would have every type of character feeding from the effect of the wealthy in a more profligate manner, with so many opportunities for profiting from naive people," she said. "With this atmosphere there would come more freedom and bad behaviour - as seen in Pride and Prejudice.

"There was a growing belief that the seaside was good for health problems and the spas which had been so popular were on the wane. "This is why Jane Austen was leading the way with her ideas in her last unfinished novel 'Sanditon' by setting it at the seaside." She said it was thought that the Ramsgate area may have been the setting for the novel. Jane Austen’s Britain: A traveler haunts her haunts - The Washington Post Jane Austen’s Britain: A traveler haunts her haunts The inside track on Washington politics. Be the first to know about new stories from PowerPost. Sign up to follow, and we’ll e-mail you free updates as they’re published. You’ll receive free e-mail news updates each time a new story is published. You’re all set! By Zofia Smardz May 23, 2013 “Oh, no, you can’t go into the field, dear. It’s private. And there may be cows, and the ground’s very humpy.” The nice lady in little Steventon Church outside tiny Steventon village smiles sweetly, even though I’ve interrupted her Saturday cleaning duties to ask for directions to Steventon Rectory.

Well, to where Steventon Rectory used to be. That’s Steventon Rectory as in the birthplace of Jane Austen. The place where the ever-elusive author (1775-1817) lived more than half her life. Every Austen fan knows that, of course. Or should. I confess that though I’m a fairly gung-ho Austen fan, I’d forgotten this if I’d ever known it. But now that it’s the 200th anniversary of “Pride and Prejudice” — all together, now: “It is a truth universally acknowledged . . .” — and I’ve come to England to haunt her haunts, I’ve brushed up on all things Jane. Details: Jane Austen’s world My husband and I have checked out this little 12th-century country church (a.k.a. St. Nicholas) in rural Hampshire, where Jane’s father was pastor. We’ve seen the Austen graves in the churchyard — chiefly that of brother James, who took over after Dad retired. We’ve stared at the enormous 900-year-old yew that hid the church-door key in its hollow core.

Now I’d like to get up close and personal with the site of Jane’s home for 25 years. But apparently this cannot be. “There’s not much to see, really,” the church lady says comfortingly. “Just this tree.” She holds up a photo of a large, spreading tree in an empty pasture. “It’s a lime, is that right, Anne?” she calls to another lady, who’s clearing away dead flowers up on the altar and doesn’t hear. We head down the rutted dirt lane and stop at a pasture enclosed by high hedgerows. Here’s where the rectory stood until James tore it down in the 1820s to build a more imposing one across the way. Oh, James, James. What were you thinking? Ah, well. The hedgerows haven’t leafed out yet, good thing. I can poke my nose into this nice big gap, if I stand on tiptoe and stre-e-etch my neck as far as I can. Oof, these hedges are tall! But yes. There’s the lime tree, and beyond it, a fence around the site of an old well. And that’s it. All that’s left of Jane’s early home.

And I’m as close as I’ll get to it. Well, that’s how it goes on a Jane Austen pilgrimage. You think, if I can only see where she lived and worked and danced and played, I’ll get inside her head. Capture her genius. Hah. That’s not so easy, is it, old girl? After 200 years, there’s not that much to see. And you’re so good at hiding. But it won’t stop me from looking for you. From village to village It’s such a little table — maybe 18 to 24 inches in diameter. She wrote on this? Really? With a quill pen? I’d be forever knocking the inkstand to the floor. At Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, another teeny Hampshire hamlet — where she spent the last eight years of her life — I’m gawking at a 12-sided occasional table in the dining room. This was her writing desk, and it’s like a shrine, visitors crowding worshipfully around its plexiglass stall. The varnish is worn, and there’s a big crack in it.

After Jane’s death (at just 41), her mother apparently thought nothing of giving it away to a manservant. Imagine! But now it’s back where it belongs, so we can forgive you, Mom. After writing “Northanger Abbey,” “Sense and Sensibility” and “Pride” in Steventon, Jane finally spiffed up the manuscripts for publication here in this plain country cottage that her wealthy brother Edward provided for her and her sister and their mother. Then she knocked off “Mansfield Park,” “Emma” and “Persuasion,” too. On little bits of paper on this little bitty desk. I. Am. In. Awe. And feeling close to seeing Jane. Very, very close. “I shall have to read more Austen,” says my English friend Deborah, looking at the display about the 200th anniversary of “P and P.” Which she had to read in school, she says. “And you know what that does to one.” Ah, yes. Force-feed someone the classics, and they’ll vomit them up undigested. And yet Jane defies the general trend toward oblivion.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged (sorry) that she’s way more popular today than ever before. (Personally, I think it’s all Colin Firth.) We wander through the drawing room, where a visitor sits down at the piano — not the one that Jane played every morning — and plunks out “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” (Not bad!) We ogle the three-volume first edition of “Pride” (the publisher probably destroyed the original manuscript, I read). We step into the bedroom that Jane shared with sister Cassandra (no, it’s not their actual tented bed). Jane’s fading again. I wander down the upstairs hall thinking, “Where are you?” Wait. That patchwork quilt on the glass-enclosed bed in the former guest room — it was made by the three Austen ladies, the sign says. Aha! Another something that her hands touched. She semi-materializes again, but she’s gone as soon as I step outside the room. Sigh. We duck into the kitchen, where I try scratching out a few words with a quill pen — kind of tricky! — set out on a table while Deborah makes some sachets from the dried lavender in a bowl.

I guess all museums these days love this interactive stuff. The visitors sure do: A group of girls is busily trying on all the period-style clothing laid out on a bench, giggling nonstop. I’d have a go at a bonnet myself, but they’re kind of hogging them all. Okay, enough of this homebody stuff. Jane and Cassandra spent hours every day roaming the countryside around Chawton. It’s a lovely sunny day — in England! — so we set off on the “circular walk,” a four-mile tramp across swampy fields of grazing sheep and through the woods to and from the village of Upper Farringdon, where the Austen ladies would visit friends for tea. The route winds past Chawton House, brother Edward’s castlelike manor (now a library of women authors), and Chawton Church, where the Austens worshiped (and Mom and Cassandra are buried). We check it out, but alas, this isn’t really Jane’s church — a fire gutted most of that one in 1871; this is the rebuilt version. See? It happens over and over. Layers of time between her and us. Her corner of Hampshire — a.k.a.

“The Neighborhood” — is so altered: The assembly rooms at Basingstoke (the Meryton of “Pride,” some think), where she danced away so many evenings — demolished. Manydown, the house where she flirted with her Irish puppy love, Tom Lefroy — gone. The Wheatsheaf, the inn where she’d walk to pick up the family mail — part of a Premier (think Holiday) Inn. Even when something’s still around, you can’t be sure, 100 percent, of an Austen connection. Take The Vyne. My guidebook says flat-out that Jane attended balls at this lovely old Tudor estate that once belonged to Henry VIII’s Lord Chamberlain. But try telling that to the guides at the house museum. “Oh, you hear different stories,” says one. “Some say she did visit, some say she didn’t.” Or “she did come here, but she didn’t like it,” says another. “We think she makes a reference to the house in ‘Mansfield Park,’ ” and she (mis)quotes a description that I spend hours later trying to pinpoint in the book. (Found it, I think: “The house . . .

is a large, regular, brick building; heavy, but respectable looking. . . .” As they say here, spot on!) A third seems exasperated by the very question. “Well, if she did visit, it’s just because it’s a big house in the area,” she says dismissively. “I mean, she got around, didn’t she?” Well, yes, she did. She certainly did. Scouring Southampton “You know, if she’d been famous when she was alive, she’d have more than just plaques to mark her life,” my perceptive husband calls after me as I charge up the High Street in Southampton, searching for the next marker on the city’s Jane Austen Heritage Trail. Southampton claimed the author for a few years (1806-9), so we’re spending a couple of hours tracking down the Jane places. Such as they are. You could say that this sprawling southern port city ain’t what it was in the Regency era. Then, it was a seaside spa for the moneyed-and-landed set, all graceful gardens and water coming close up to the medieval stone walls. Today? Well, the walls still ring the Old Town, with gaps. But the water?

I can’t even see it from the, er, Water Gate. Which once stood beside a quay where Jane and her family boarded a boat one day for a trip to the island of Hythe. Now the tower’s totally landlocked, separated by a broad, broad boulevard from the piers where gigantic cruise ships dock. No, the town Jane knew is mostly a bunch of blue plaques. An ultra-modern shopping complex crouches on the site of the Spa Gardens, where she took daily walks. A faux-medieval pub claims the spot of her house on Castle Square. The Theatre Royal, where she saw a pair of plays, has morphed into a hideous high-rise. I’ve just about given up hope of really sensing her anywhere. But the Dolphin Hotel, where she supposedly celebrated her 18th birthday in 1793, is still standing. Which is why I’m charging up the High Street (also, the clock is ticking on our car in the municipal lot), toward a low-slung beige building with large bay windows. “At last, you can enter a building which Jane actually visited!” announces the trail plaque on the wall, totally reading my mind.

I march in to the dark, wood-paneled lobby, where a line of men in business suits is waiting to check in, and straight up the broad staircase. And there, at the top of the landing, is the ballroom. The room where she partied. The door’s locked, but I can peer through the glass at the modest-size rectangular room carpeted in blue. Wow, it’s not very big, I think. But I guess Jane’s whole world was smaller than ours. Yet grander. A ball in Bath Now this is what I call a ballroom. I mean the Assembly Rooms ballroom in Bath, where I’m standing in the middle of the dance floor and feeling a bit of a thrill, I have to say. Jane wrote about this place, in “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion.” But she also came here. Danced here, under these very crystal chandeliers. Okay, they’re electrified now, and the building, an 18th-century entertainment complex, was bombed in WWII and has been restored. But somehow it still feels so authentic. Authentic being the word for all of Bath, really.

“You can still turn a corner here and come upon a scene she described in her books,” says the interpreter who opens our tour of the Jane Austen Centre, mentioning the Gravel Walk near the Royal Crescent, scene of a pivotal “Persuasion” moment. Down which (paved now, not gravel) we of course have to walk on our peregrinations among the points of Jane. Which are many and surviving, and much-trumpeted. Bath takes huge pride in its Jane connections, despite her prejudice against the city. It’s ironic: She’s the most famous resident of this gorgeous burg of golden buildings in southwest England, but as she has a character in “Northanger Abbey” say, it’s a nice place for a visit, “but we wouldn’t live here for millions!” She loved Bath when visiting in her early 20s but not so much a half-decade later, after her retired father moved the family to the spa town for five years (1801-06). (“Look, it says he wanted to be near better medical facilities,” I tease my husband at the Austen Centre.

That’s one of his top criteria for retirement, too.) Money was tight, then her father died (so much for those medical facilities) and the lodging situation declined depressingly. Who can blame her for not writing a word of fiction in all her time here? I’m feeling a little disloyal, though, because I’m pretty entranced by Bath — the graceful limestone buildings, the crescent-shaped and circular streets, the squares and the Abbey and the Pump Room, where we stop in for a taste of the hot spa water (blech, but you have to do it). But finding Jane — it’s a hunt! We hit No. 13 Queen Square, where she stayed on a trip with brother Edward in 1799. It’s real estate offices now. No. 25 Gay Street, where Mom and daughters lived afterward — a dentist’s office. The Austen Centre at No. 40 is in an identical, slightly smaller building, but the exhibit stuff sort of masks that. And there are no actual Jane artifacts. Of which we’ve been warned by Martin Salter, the mutton-chopped greeter at the front door. “It’s not a museum,” he says.

“More an interpretation of her life and times.” In his period outfit, complete with top hat and walking stick, Martin’s said to be the most photographed man in Bath. (“Possibly Britain,” he says modestly and tips his hat to a driver honking a greeting.) After cream tea in the center’s tea room — gazing at a painting of Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy (told you!) — we set off down the hill, across shop-lined Pulteney Bridge and down long, grandiose Great Pulteney Street to No. 4 Sydney Place. This was the Austens’ first and best lodging in Bath. It’s private now, so all I can do is snap a few photos of the front door with the signature black plaque memorializing Jane’s years of residence. I’ve just put away my camera when two women round the corner and run laughing and chattering in Italian up the steps to strike an arms-spread-wide pose beneath the plaque. Well, look at that. Even in Italy, she’s got fans.

Winding up in Winchester “In this house Jane Austen lived her last days and died 18th July 1817.” The oval plaque hangs high on the front of 8 College St., a sad and scruffy little beige house that’s nevertheless a big tourist attraction. In a corner of the ground-floor picture window, someone’s taped a hand-scrawled note: “This is a private house and not open to the public,” it scolds. “I’m sure they’re sick of people trying to peer in,” says Michael, our city walking tour guide, as we stop across the narrow street, beside the walls that surround Winchester’s majestic cathedral. I’d be one of those people for sure, but there’s a large sheet strung across the window. Drat. Here’s where Jane and Cassandra lived for six weeks while Jane’s doctor tried to cure the illness — Addison’s disease? cancer? — that was killing her. But, sigh, we can’t go in. We can, however, go into the cathedral. Where she’s buried. Which is amazing when you think about it.

I mean, she was still pretty much a nobody when she died, but here she is lying in one of the world’s most stupendous churches (it’s the longest medieval cathedral in Europe). It’s as if the universe knew, you know? Come on, you can’t help thinking it. They say that her clergyman brother Henry pulled some strings. But still. “It does seem unusual to me, yes,” says a cathedral guide. “It would be quite an honor, I’d think.” It was a simple grave to start, just a stone slab in the floor of the north aisle. It famously doesn’t mention her writing, but that was fixed around 1870, when a nephew had a brass plaque with reference to her work installed on the wall a couple of yards away. And then in 1900, her by-then-adoring public paid for a memorial stained-glass window above the plaque. So it’s quite the monument today, yessir. The most famous of the thousands in this enormous space. Even Colin Firth has visited; a tour guide goes all goosebumpy telling us about it. (Told you!) And that fancy plaque really catches everybody’s eye.

People head straight for it and pose for a picture. Like the three women who come in while I’m studying the cathedral’s huge west front window, which is like an abstract mosaic of stained glass with no dis­cern­ible image. (That’s because Oliver Cromwell’s army smashed it during the Civil War in the 1640s, and it was reassembled years later from the bits of glass that the townsfolk had hidden in their homes. Says the folklore.) Two of the women march right over to the plaque. It is a very shiny plaque, I admit. And the large flower arrangement on the ledge beneath it does give it that gravesitey feel. As the women pose, their friend backs up to frame the shot, and I glance down at her feet. She’s standing right on Jane’s grave. She snaps her picture, and the three move off into the cathedral’s depths. As I said, Jane. You sure are good at hiding.

Question: The Jane Austen Museum is in which Hampshire village where she spent the last eight years of her life?
Answer: Chawton